P - Practices

P1 - Experiencing Places and Moments of Otium in Contemporary European City Tourism

The main aim of project P1 is to conceptualise Muße in the context of city tourism and to consider Muße as an urban phenomenon. Firstly, we will focus on three major European urban tourist destinations (Barcelona, Florence and Paris) and compile a linguistic corpus of nine German travel guide books which will be the subject of content and discourse analysis. Taking into account travel blogs and tourism statistics we will, secondly, carry out field work (including 20-30 semi-structured interviews with German speaking travellers) in each of the three cities. An analysis of the field work's results will also be conducted.

P2 - Worship and Otium. Religiosity in Everyday Life and the Experience of Church Services in Namibia

The project embeds the analysis of Muße in the anthropology of religion. Using the categories developed in the CRC to analyse Muße, we will describe two different forms of religious services in Northern Namibia and ask what commonalities and differences between ritual practice and practices of Muße emerge. To do so, we compare the predictable sequences of ritual in an Anglican historic mission church with the more lively services in charismatic churches marked by inspiration and cathartic experiences.

P3 - Otium in the hospital? A Mindfulness-Based Intervention for Resident Physicians

The project is a follow up of project A4 Muße in School. It focuses on the question to what extent the practice of mindfulness enables Muße. We will conduct a randomized controlled trial with 176 assistant physicians in several hospitals. Participants will either attend a mindfulness-based and Muße-oriented intervention or will be able to do whatever they want in the same amount of working. The project has the overarching objective to strengthen humanistic aspects of medical practice by providing certain mental and psychological skills.

By adopting the research issues and the analytical categories of the Freiburg Collaborative Research Center on otium the research project develops a new approach to Niccoló Machiavelli's letters and their relationship to the political and military practice of the quondam segretario. Different and heterogeneous concepts of otium characterize the writing circumstances of his letters written between 1512 and 1527 as well as of his major works, such as Il Principe, the Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, the Libro dell’arte della guerra and the Mandragola. The project particularly focuses on how the figure of retreat as a strategic move in time and space informs methods of otium, but also military practices. In the light of a thus strategic understanding of otium Machiavelli’s texts reveal alternative and innovative concepts of action, that go beyond the context of early modern Florence.